Book Review: To Survive On This Shore
There have always been people on all points of the gender and sexuality spectrum. Contemporaneously, there is an explosion of trans activism. However, 100 years of studies on transsexualism makes evident that the emergence of transgender and gender non-conforming people isn’t a new phenomenon. The Joyas, an essential third gender people of the Californian Native Americans, survived the conquistador’s attempts to exterminate them—forcing the Joyas to conform to heteronormative roles and, also, erasing their history. Indeed, for hundreds of years, what’s been missing is the narrative of transgender and gender non-conforming people. In To Survive on this Shore photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre document personal accounts of transgender and gender non-conforming older adults. Their work is important because it legitimizes the narratives of an underrepresented population at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and age. For some of them, they have had to face rejection from our broad society, as well their more intimate societies— family, friends, and lovers. Instead of wallow, they move forward because that is what they have always done. Here is a quote from Duchess Milan: “If I lose everybody, but I keep me that’s all that matters,” (Dugan and Fabbre 10). It is important to note that the narratives of transgender and gender non-conforming Americans highlight the ‘Q’ in LGBTQ to not only mean queer, but amorphous, meaning anyone.
You can purchase To Survive On This Shore by Jess T. Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre here
